Talk for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in O.T.
September 26, 2010
The Cost of Discipleship

Archbishop Oscar Romero was a very humble man, who was viewed, when appointed to El Salvador as a very nice church-man who would not make any waves .But when he saw his priests-good hard-working men of God, being killed, he knew he had to speak out forcibly, and did so in the name of Jesus and his gospel .And you know what happened –like Jesus Christ, he had to go. He like Jesus was disrupting the plans the generals and the elite had for everyone else- the common people .The cost of discipleship is real.

Listen to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor in his book –
The Cost of Discipleship "But now Jesus calls them the salt of the earth-salt, the most indispensable necessity of life. The disciples, that is to say, are the highest good, the supreme value which the earth possesses, for without them it cannot live. They are the salt that sustains the earth.” He’s talking about us –we are the highest value, that provides meaning and real value, by the way we live; to the degree that we follow Jesus Christ. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who died as a martyr for Christ and the poor 30 years ago, was not afraid to preach the truth .His voice rang out in defense of those who were being victimized every day by an unjust government. In a homily just one year and one month before his death, he insisted that” to try to preach without referring to the history one preaches in, is not to preach the gospel.

Amos the prophet of the 8century B.C. could not speak for God without referencing those human attitudes and behaviors that were clearly in contradiction to God and his message. You see, the rich were not hateful or hostile to the poor, they were complacent. I mentioned last week that Fr. Senior, a scripture scholar spoke of the church suffering from ‘a spiritual fatigue, an inertia.’  “Woe to the complacent in Zion, lying upon beds of ivory, stretched comfortably on their couches. Therefore now they shall be the first to go into exile.”

What does that say to our very high standard of living? We just read a week ago that poverty is at all time high in America. Pope Benedict in London this past week said the following: ”In our time, the price to be paid for fidelity to the gospel is no longer being hanged, drawn and quartered, but it often involves being dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied.” Paul in the second reading 1Timothy 6; ”But you man of God pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love patience. Compete well for the faith. Lay hold of eternal life, to which you were called when you made the noble confession.” The gospel –the rich man and the poor man. In a scene from the “Godfather” movie, Michael Corleone goes to confession to a bishop in Rome, who begins by taking a stone from a fountain and cracking it open to show that, despite its surface wetness, the interior has remained bone dry. It is an image of how hard it is for God’s grace to penetrate the interior of a heart irreversibly committed to a non-godly way of life.